Note: I am linking you to the app in the Amazon Appstore, which is currently $14.99. However, Amazon has done price matching on apps before. I am going to click the link there to tell Amazon about a lower price. Don’t get this one thinking it is free unless it says it is free (which I’m hoping it might be later today, and then probably just for today). If you want to click the link, too, that might be a good thing…couldn’t hurt. 🙂 You will need the URL where it the free price shows at Barnes & Noble: that’s

This is not a full version of Office, but it handles basic documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) pretty well. I can fill information and check boxes, and with a Bluetooth keyboard, compose reasonably well. It doesn’t have more sophisticated functions, like versioning in Word or Visual Basic for Applications access in Excel.

If you are a NOOK owner and don’t have it, I definitely get it. If you are a Kindle Fire owner…well, if they do price match and make it free, grab it! 🙂 After all, I did give them the information…

Honestly, I think this pricing may be an accident. I think they might have intended to make each individual $5 (that’s how the others are priced) and unintentionally marked this one down as well. After all, it’s more than a $40 savings!

Double-check the price before buying, but don’t wait in case it changes. This is another great delayed gift for someone. Buy it as a gift now, and delay the delivery until a gift-giving occasion (like a birthday) in the future. You can read my reviews of the books. I do recommend them, and not just for kids.

Updating the payment method for subscriptions

A reader wrote to me in a private comment* about having to replace credit cards due to a security breach, and then having the subscription to this blog (thanks, subscribers!) canceled, even though the card had been updated at Amazon.

That’s something I’ve written about before, but it’s worth repeating and may be counterintuitive.

The payment method for your subscription items (blogs, magazines, newspapers) is not the same as the one defined for your 1-click method.

You can have one credit card for 1-click, and a different one for a subscription…in fact, different ones for each of your subscriptions.

Yes, if you have a lot of subscriptions, it can take a bit of time. We have ten currently (two of which are free).

However, it would hypothetically allow for one person to pay for a subscription for another person, for one thing. You might also want different payment methods for work subscriptions and home ones (if you are writing off medical journals, for example).

This is one of the few places we can have multiple payment methods at the same time on a Kindle account…and that’s probably why it’s not obvious to people.

I really appreciate my reader bringing this up! The reader also suggested that it might maybe be possible that the breach happened at Amazon…I haven’t heard anything about that specifically, but if you are getting notifications, you might want to let me know.

The Verge: “National Geographic celebrates 125 years of remarkable photography with new Tumblr”

which showed up in my morning Flipboard read has a really cool picture of Alexander Graham Bell kissing his wife inside a “tetrahedral kite”. The Tumblr from NatGeo sound like it could be really interesting.

Wired UK: “Here’s why porn could be banned in the EU, but probably won’t be”

Of course, that picture of Alexander Graham Bell might be considered porn by somebody (everything can be, I suppose). If that’s the case, it could possibly be banned in the European Union in the future:

Does a mention of porn belong in this blog? The issue here is that bans can be very sweeping, and it can sometimes be manipulated. Take the recent takedown of a commercial by Amazon, which clearly wasn’t pornographic by the vast majority’s definition (there wasn’t any sexual activity in at all…although, I suppose some might consider a bikini inappropriate for some viewers). It appears to be possible that it was temporarily removed from YouTube through a coordinated campaign, although there’s no way to tell whether or not there were independent “takedown” requests as well.

I always tend to lean in favor of information being more free, so I get concerned when I see calls for a broad ban.

Fortunately, according to the article, it seems unlikely this would actually be enacted.

about the truly innovative marketing surrounding a new novel…really clever stuff. However, I’m not going to link to the book, because it blocks text-to-speech access. How can you be so forward in reaching out to your community of fans, and then block access? I really thought that was starting to go away, and it may be, but here’s a prominent example.

Vote for the great American novel

Polls are fun, and you can vote for the Great American Novel in this one:

I agree with a lot of the candidates (they limited it to one per author), and they do have a way for you to add an “other”. Leading right now? To Kill a Mockingbird (which is not currently legally available as an e-book).

What do you think? Is The Stand the great American novel? Should I not even mention a story about a book that blocks TTS access if I’m not going to write about the book? Is B&N doing too little, too late with a free app on one day of the week? How does this play into a possible sale of the retail business? Does it bother you to have the word “porn” mentioned in this blog…and does it surprise you that I would (I have been called a “prude” before)? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post…you can do it privately, by letting me know you want it to be kept private (see below).

* My reader commented on the About page for this blog, and asked me to keep the comment private. That is the best way to reach me…I will not publish a comment that I understand is to be kept private, and comments do not appear on the blog unless I approve them first. I am much more likely to respond, and to do it more quickly, to a comment on the blog than to an e-mail

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This entry was posted on March 8, 2013 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Round-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Over here, that MSFT Office app is Just over £6, so I’ve saved it for a later purchase as I’ve just ordered something else! The one offered here lets you work with Docs and print them. Nice news, thanks for that! Jen

Thanks for the heads up on the Hunger Games trilogy. I grabbed it up at the $5 price. I had read all three through the KOLL, but it’s nice to have my own permanent copies.

Your mention of the Kindle commercial with the two husbands reminded me that I’ve seen it on air twice this week. Once was on Food Network during one of their middle of the night reruns of “Chopped,” and the other was on “Watch What Happens Live” on BRAVO.

can you buy a kindle book without using 1-click? my son is registered on my amazon account so he can inherit my library and has a credit card registered to buy e-books, but we can NOT see how he can use it because the only way we can see to buy ebooks is with the 1- click option. if i turn it off it is still on re ebooks and uses my card. any way to turn 1-click off and then put in cart and buy or would one have to make his card the default card for him to pay for it and then change it back to my card? this seems onerous. any ideas? also why am i not seeing your blog anymore in my email?
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The only way to buy Kindle books from the Kindle store is to use 1-click.

There are a couple of approaches you can use here.

One is to switch back and forth, as you suggest.

If your son also has his own Amazon account (you don’t say if he’s an adult or not), he could gift you the books. That’s how one of the people on our account does. That person gifts the book to me, paying for it with their own credit card. I accept the gift, and then that person reads it on our account.

If your son doesn’t have his own account, switching back and forth is one way to go. Your son could also buy gift certificates for the amount that he spends, and you would apply them to the account.

How did you sign up to get the blog in the e-mail? From the WordPress site?